With your help, we can make the new citizenship GCSE even better

There are two consultations on the revised GCSE, due to take effect from 2016: the Department for Education is consulting on subject content and Ofqual is consulting on assessment. We need your help in both, so we’ve made it easy for you.

In partnership with Democratic Life, the Citizenship Foundation and ACT have developed example replies for both consultations in response to the questions about citizenship studies.

When you click ‘submit’ at the end of each form, the response will be sent directly to the relevant body (ie DfE or Ofqual) and copied to Democratic Life.

Of course, if you prefer, you can edit, re-write or replace our response entirely with your own.

Our main concerns

100 per cent exam

The proposed shift from 40 per cent to 100 per cent examination is a fundamental change to the nature of citizenship studies GCSE that doesn’t recognise the practical citizenship skills that are central to the subject.

There is no evidence that citizenship action cannot be assessed reliably and validly through direct teacher assessment or that examinations are a more reliable, valid and manageable means of assessment.

Lack of active citizenship

Citizenship action is covered insufficiently in the proposed full course GCSE content and omitted entirely from the proposed short course GCSE content. Citizenship action should be a central requirement for all GCSEs in citizenship studies.

Too much content?

The specification of knowledge has been significantly increased in the proposed subject content and this raises important issues for teaching training.

One Response to “With your help, we can make the new citizenship GCSE even better”

I thought the oignrial concept of As was to allow students to achieve some kind of qualification if they decided not to complete A Levels, rather than working for a year with nothing to show for it? It also helped slower learners (often the Summer borns) time to catch up and perhaps produce better results later on. Perhaps the raising of the school leaving age might help us to consider what is good for some students and perhaps do A Levels over 3 years if required. Why we still expect all students to achieve at the same time and at the same level (and often penalise those who might take a little longer)remains a mystery. ESOL students might also benefit from a three year course, enabling those who need it, to develop higher levels of communication skills.Concerning whether or not University’s accept As qualifications since they attract points under the UCAS system, some universities do accept them.Let’s try some Blue Skies thinking around A Levels, as well as HE and develop greater links between the two systems we might then agree on some important aspects.